Killer Dog

The story of the dog-attack (with some use of hyperbole, exaggeration, and imagination). But seriously, most of this is true.

It was my first day as a door to door salesman. I was a dope; a fool; a young, desperate idiot. (and I still am). I thought this would be a good job. The truth is- any job advertised on Craigslist as “we’ll hire you immediately” is not going to be a good job. Those that know me, know that I’m no door to door salesman. And I know it – I’m no peppy people-person – but they told us that we needed to be nonchalant. That’s what they said in training. The word they used was “disinterested.” My head twitched. Disinterested? I can do that. Hell, I’m doing it right now. I’ve been zoning out for half of this lecture. “You need to act like it’s no big deal, like everyone does this, it’s not a sell, it’s a standard switch, it’s a registration for a ‘discount.’ It’s all an act.” Then I was in – I figured I could do that, and I figured it wouldn’t be too bad. What I didn’t know was that I’d be walking endless miles in Chicago’s worst ghettos in the hottest days the city’s seen in years. I didn’t know I’d be squaring off with The Beast, with Kujo, with the devil himself. (dramatic enough?)

Yeah I got sent to some shitty places. I went to Englewood, the rough neighborhood south of Chicago where D.Wade was raised, and I heard Tupac’s “Hit Em Up” blasting from someone’s house (real life can be so stereotypical). I went to west side hoods. One time I was just doin’ my job when this dude rode by on a bike and he says, “Whiteboy.” And he keeps riding. I look back at him. He’s looking at me, as he continues to ride down the desolate street. How am I supposed to reply to that? “Greetings, African American. Have a pleasant afternoon. I hope your bicycle chain is sufficiently lubricated.” Instead I just awkwardly watched him ride away, wondering if I’d be seeing him again. I saw all types of shit that I don’t have the time to explain here, like this one lady who gave birth in a shopping cart while I was signing her up for a new energy supplier (okay, that’s not true – she thought I was a scammer, so I just gave her a brochure), I got warnings from people to leave their neighborhood before dark, saw pit bulls wandering around unchained, unleashed, but I was never harmed in the ghetto. It was day one, in a place called Hickory Hills, Illinois. Sounds like a nice, safe place, right? No. It was a goddamn bloodbath.

We’re given partners for safety – you’re partner walks up the one side of the street; you walk up the other side of the street; you keep track of each other. I was a rookie, day one. I was Ethan Hawke. My partner was more experienced, Cruz – he’s no Denzel Washington, but he was raised in the rougher side of town, and he always carried a blade. Matter a’ fact, he was about as Denzel as it gets in the selling of deregulated electricity. I got my first sale right away. It took a long time, explaining and bullshitting, making stupid jokes and fabricating facts about my company, but I eventually got her to do it, then she screwed up the confirmation phone call, then we did it again. It took a while but I got it. And she was like my fifth house, so I was like hey I might be great at this. Wrong. I got one more sale the entire day –but, the day was cut short by a brutal showdown between good and evil. It was about 7:30 pm, and we were thinking about calling it a day in about half an hour. Cruz was giving me advice on the job, but I wasn’t really listening ‘cuz he had just as many sales as me. “You’re either a sheep or a wolf,” he says. “It takes a wolf to catch a wolf!” (Training Day? I liked it better when he was making Back to the Future references. This blog is way past its prime.) We turned a corner and walked a block down a smaller street. Two dogs ran alongside the fence next to us, they in their yard, us on the sidewalk. It was cute. I even said, “I’d like to own a dog someday, man.”

Fate, it seems, isn’t without a sense of humor.

Thanks for the prophetic interjection, Morpheus. Anyway, we turned onto the next street with no idea what insanity lay before us. I hit my first house, no one home, next house, nobody answers, next house, not home. I’m getting a good lead on Cruz because he’s talking to people, but I’m just hittin empty houses. I’m on my way to my next house, and there’s a skinny girl about my age walking towards me, holding a leash, which is attached to a full grown German shepherd. Well, it’s only part German shepherd; it’s also part Kodiak bear, part komodo dragon, and part Mike Tyson. And it’s been abusing steroids (I can tell by the needle marks on its tail). This thing is a beast. It’s walking straight at me, and I can tell by the look in its evil black eyes that it wants my blood.

Now, I’m not a dog person, so normally I would probably already have chickened out and crossed to the other side of the street. But it’s been a long day, and I’m too tired to care, too tired to think. Plus Cruz forced me to smoke PCP. (We get it. You like Training Day.) So I’m just trudging forward, expecting no problems from this monster. As we get closer and closer to each other, the demon-dog starts to pick up its speed (apparently they can smell fear. Or maybe it’s the urine dripping down my pants.) To my left is the driveway of my next house, so I think to myself, I’m just going to step into this driveway, and that girl, who is far too frail to hold back this German-bear-dragon-Tyson-beast, is going to keep walking along the sidewalk with Iron Mike, and we will have no problems. Wrong again. As fate would have it, the driveway I was stepping into happened to be where this skinny (possibly malnourished) girl lived, and consequently, where her territorial P.E.D.-abusing canine lived.

I suppose, if dogs could use words and speak English, he would have said, “Hey, excuse me, pal. Um, see, you just stepped onto my turf. Right there. Now, I know we don’t have any Private Property signs or No Soliciting signs or even a warning about an enormous and dangerous dog – which would be me – But I’ve literally been peeing all over this front yard for the past nine years. Are you gonna try to tell me you can’t smell that? What the hell do you use your nose for, huh? Look, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions here, buddy, but your complete lack of regard for my careful and consistent pissing makes me think you’ve come here to rob this house and then kill everyone I love and then slit my throat. Is that what you’re here to do? Cuz I don’t know you, and I’ve never smelled you before! I’m man’s best friend! So don’t fuck with my friends!”

Instead, Kujo just started barking like a madman and getting all up in my business. I foolishly assumed the girl (who very well may have been suffering from AIDS, or bulimia. This is pure speculation. Just as one may speculate that I am a total loser based on my ownership of a blog.), I assumed she could hold onto the leash – because what are leashes good for if you can’t hold onto them? Then they’d be merely for fashion – like a new pair of Nikes for a paraplegic (making fun of disabled people. He’s back. The blog is back). So, what do I do? I stay still. I figure this is the right move because the dog is just being very loud, but his owner will soon get him to chill. Wrong again. The dog is not yielding in his loud barking and getting right up at me. He lunges to bite me, so I turn (this protects my family jewels, but now I can’t watch as Mrs. Weakness lets go of the leash, and Mr. Murder makes his move). Kujo bites me directly in the buttocks. Right buttcheek. Pierces through the khaki shorts (they were nice ones too!). Pierces through the boxers (he seemed like a boxers kinda guy). And pierces through my skin (your blood flows. You’re mortal. MORTAL COMBAT! DOODID-DOODID-DOODID-DOODID-DADA DO DO DO DODO. Sound effects are hard to spell, but I think I nailed it.) At this point, I did the right thing and turned the other cheek. (I’d like to thank Weird Al for that joke.) No. I raise my arms up in the air because I don’t want this crazy animal to bite off my fingers. And let the record show that I did not yet panic – even as my buttcheek is bleeding. Now the beast jumps up and chomps onto my bicep, ripping through the sleeve of my work short and my undershirt (the undershirt being a summer volleyball tournament t-shirt, which is awesome as hell – the shirt, not volleyball, or men who wear volleyball t-shirts. More on this later.) This murderous animal just jumped up to my raised arm – that means he could potentially get to my neck, which I hear is a pretty important piece of your body (the paraplegic with the Nikes told me). So at this point, literally as soon as that thing jumped up and chomped my arm, I snapped into straight panic mode, and everything gets blurry after that moment, but I’m pretty sure what happened was – I grabbed the loose leash and yanked the bloodhound into the air and slammed him against a nearby tree. Kujo landed on his hind legs and walked towards me like a wolfman. I climb onto the roof of the car in their driveway, but it’s no use. Wolfie puts his front legs on the roof and lifts himself up, so I do what I have to do. I sweep the leg (much like the asshole in Karate Kid). Kujo tumbles off the car in pain and begins whimpering. Now skinny girl is extremely upset so she picks up a pitchfork that was lying in their front yard (merely for fashion). She swings it at my legs and I jump over the attack, landing in their yard with a graceful cartwheel. But wolf-dog was waiting, the whimpering all an act, and he drops me to the hard earth with a wicked uppercut (ala young Tyson). I’m on my back, barely conscious, when Kujo begins slashing away at my chest with his claws. And the girl is coming over with the pitch fork for the kill shot. But Kujo drops. Stopped, silent. Dead. A blade protrudes from the skull of the beast. I look to the street – Cruz. He threw the knife. It takes a wolf to kill a wolf.

“Nooo!!!” screams the girl.

She reaches up with the pitchfork to kill me, so I sweep the leg again (Mr. Miyagi would not be proud, but I had to survive). She drops to the ground, but quickly gets back up, as I rise to my feet as well. Cruz is in the yard now, and the three of us look at each other. The girl runs at Cruz, screaming like the psycho she is, holding the pitchfork like a spear. Cruz slaps the pitchfork down with his hands, she spikes it into the grass and jumps, using her momentum like a pole-vaulter, she flips over Cruz and yanks the pitchfork along with her. She is now behind Cruz with the pitchfork. Cruz spins around with a roundhouse kick to her face, dropping her backwards onto the sidewalk, the pitchfork tumbling aside. Cruz kicks the pitchfork up into his hands and stands over the girl.

“Bite the curb!” Cruz shouts.

Cruz. No, man, I already made too many movie references. We hit the quota.

“Oh, right,” he says. “Well, I guess I’ll just kill her with this pitchfork then.”

Yeah, and then maybe we should get outta here.

Cruz kills her with the pitchfork and we begin walking away, into the horizon. “Yeah,” he says. “This neighborhood was shit. I only got two sales.”

Yeah, me too. Hey, Cruz, isn’t it weird how that skinny girl, who was probably suffering from some kind of tape-worm, couldn’t hold onto a dog leash, but somehow she could wield a pitchfork like a samurai warrior?

“Well, I think holding onto the dog-leash was probably pretty difficult considering the size of that monstrous dog.”

Still, I’m just saying there were some definite plot-holes here.

“Only if you poke at it.”

Like, why did I give the dog about fifty nicknames, yet the girl was never given a name? Isn’t that weird?

“That’s not a plot-hole. That’s a literary device to show that the dog was a more prominent character.”

And isn’t it weird how we’re still in the story, yet we’re talking about the story?

“It’s called metafiction, Rory. And it’s the classiest thing you’ve ever done with this blog. Now finish the story and get outta here.”

Alright… Yo, Cruz.

“What up?”

You got somethin’ to say? I feel like you got somethin’ to say.

“I do have somethin’ to say. I’m glad you reminded me.”

What you gotta say, son?

“KING KONG.. AIN’T GOT SHIT.. ON ME!!!!”

AFTERMATH:

(Why is he still writing?) Remember when I spoke of my volleyball t-shirt. Well, that actually is a key part of the aftermath/conclusion, believe it or not. The history of the t-shirt is quite glorious. A few friends of mine planned a trip to Ghana to help teach children how to build ponzi schemes (or something useful like that). So naturally they pimped out their friends for money (other people call this “fundraising?”). They held a volleyball tournament, which cost five bucks to enter, but you got a free t-shirt, and the winning team would get prizes. They also had a snackbar (which few people made use of) and asked for donations (all in all, I’m pretty sure they ended up losing money on this. Stupid pimps). Me and my friend (previously mentioned in this blog as my neighbor in my illustrious resumé. We will call him Big Mac) decided that we would dominate this tournament because dominating is what we do, and we also enjoy free prizes. We decided (even though we were quite confident in our own skills to succeed) that we couldn’t be held back by any sort of insignificant teammates with little athletic ability and minimal volleyball experience (like ourselves?), so we drafted to our team (you get 4 players total) two girls from our high school who just so happened to be key players in multiple state championships for girls volleyball. I say ‘drafted’ because it wasn’t like “hey you wanna be on our team for that tournament.” It was more like “Hey, you’re on our team. And we’re winning.” In that same fashion, when it came time for team names, we didn’t try to do anything cute. We named ourselves “The Team That Will Win”. And we did win. Quite easily, I might add. Big Mac and I barely touched the ball. Those girls were incredible. We got some movie tickets and coupons (namely Cali Burrito. The rich man’s Taco Bell.) But the real prize turned out to be the t-shirt, which simply had a volleyball graphic and the words “It’s Ghana be Fun!” Which is corny, but in my opinion, it reaches that level of corniness which treads into “this guy knows his shirt’s corny. Oh, that’s funny. He’s the man.” Besides it was comfortable and nicely fitting, which is all I really want in a shirt. I don’t care too much what it looks like, as long as it’s not one of those stupid things that says like “I’m listening, tell me more…” I hate those shirts. Don’t be that guy. Everyone hates you. Go home. Why did you even leave the house? Asshole. (Easy there, Ghana guy.) So anyway, the shirt was amazing, and when I was alone in my apartment the night of the dog attack, bloody and mangled, tired and depressed, when I realized that my undershirt that had gotten ripped by the dog and then ripped more to use as gauze was my beloved “It’s Ghana be Fun!” t-shirt, it felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was completely destroyed. I mean I have another pair (obviously, I stole an extra from the pimp tournament), but still I had loved this shirt like a brother. They say time heals all wounds. Well, my cuts and scabs are gone (scars linger), and the Ghana t-shirt has been converted into a sleeveless, which was a revelation – the thing looks amazing! I normally don’t rock a sleeveless (you’re not white trash, huh?), but this thing’s the bomb. Now I better stop talking before you get annoyed.

Hell of a story, not entirely true, had to Hollywood it up a bit (sell out), but the people want to be entertained. If my ex-employer stumbles upon this, they should know that this was obviously told in a joking manner, so don’t be mad about how I repped the company (I didn’t give its name anyway). In other news, the extended version of the Rory-Cruz conversation will be available in the end-of-the-year book-of-my-blog-posts (one person has actually expressed interest in this, so I will continue to speak of it). Comments are still open to anyone and everyone, so feel free to give me some feedback, some words of encouragement, some poetic prose, some advertisements for natural male enhancement, or just to shout random obscenities (whoever wrote “COW BONER” is still the reigning champ). Alright, folks, time to fuck off.

This blog-post was brought to you by:

“COMBOS! It’s dog food for humans!”